The FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC®) community can come here for (at least) weekly musings on the FRC program, news, community highlights, science and technology shout-outs, and more directly from FIRST Headquarters! Comments are welcome, but they must embody the FIRST values of Gracious Professionalism® and will be moderated prior to posting. Thank you for helping to keep the conversations civil and productive.

As some of the best 2015 robots gathered in Indianapolis to create some incredible walls of totes and containers at the Indiana Robotics Invitational, I and a few other members of the FRC staff were behind the scenes working to gather information to help prepare for the 2016 season. FRC Kit of Parts Engineer Jonathan Bryant and FRC Team Advocate Jamee Luce were talking to teams to collect feedback about their experience with the Kit of Parts and more. We recognize that the type of team attending IRI is...

Stop build day. Love it or hate it? Or love it and hate it? Either way, it’s important to know exactly what that date is! In 2016, as Kickoff is January 9th, Stop Build Day will be Tuesday February 23rd, a week later in the calendar than usual. This still gives teams the traditional ‘six weeks plus a few days’ for build season. So, if you’ve already circled, electronically or otherwise, the weekend of February 20th, 2016, for a relaxing weekend with the fam, based on last season’s dates, you may want to rethink. I’m not saying you couldn’t...

Today's blog comes from Andrea Winegar, FIRST Manager of Field Operations.

Hi there, FRC Teams…

I hope the start of your July has been super!

As Frank and the FRC staff here in NH begin to post the dates for the 2016 FRC season, I’m sure you are eager to learn about when and where each awesome event will occur. Today’s post is intended to share with you an important, “One-Time Only” event date change:

The 2016 FRC Palmetto Regional will be held February 25th-27th, 2016! This will be one...

It’s pretty much just like The Matrix…well, FIRST doesn’t run on the energy from humans plugged into a big generator, but you get the idea. And I haven’t been to see the Oracle yet, but I know my chance is coming. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself.

As the FRC Team Advocate, I will be working with the Engineering Team on the 1st floor, as well...

Dr. Earl Scime, 2012 Woodie Flowers Award winner, was recently named the winner of West Virginia University’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences 2015 Outstanding Public Service Award. See all the details here. His work with FIRST was cited, including the insane 27 hour long FRC Endurance Event that took place last August - West Virginia RObotics eXtreme - hosted by his FRC team, 2614, MARS.

Please don’t forget to fill out the Kit of Parts survey, which can be found here. The survey will be closing June 14, 2015. We really do use this survey to help enhance the value of the Kit of Parts! We hope that you can take the time to provide us with this valuable information.

As many of you know, after we announced that FIRST would be moving to having two Championships starting in 2017, we released a survey to FIRST Robotics Competition teams on this change.

7,355 individuals responded. This represents about 10% or so of the total number of mentors and students we have in FRC. About 75% of the 7,355 provided a team number, and those respondents were from 1,501 teams, about 52% of the total number of FRC teams we had in 2015.

One question we asked was just a simple ‘How do you feel about having two FIRST Championships...

We’re interested in your feedback on the 2015 FRC Kit of Parts! We know that you are getting barraged with surveys right now, we apologize for the overload, but we really want to know what you think! You’re feedback is instrumental in shaping future Kit of Parts. We use this survey to look for new parts, improve current items, and increase the value that the Kit of Parts provides to teams! This feedback is also sent to Suppliers to help them make good decisions about their donations.

I hope everyone who attended Championship was inspired, had fun, and made some lifelong memories. We know that some things went really well, and some things did not go really well. The survey we recently sent out to all attending teams will let us hear directly from you on what aspects of the event fell into which categories from your perspectives.

Volunteers, Mentors, and Team supporters of all types, I hope you are able to take some time for yourselves soon to reflect on the season and recharge your batteries. I know the FRC season...

I walked through the Championship venue this afternoon to see how things were coming along. This is going to be one big show, for sure. There’s something about seeing it in person that makes it much more real than just seeing it on paper. I can’t wait for the teams to arrive! I hope FIRST has some insurance, because we’re going to be blowing the doors off this place.

Please find below the preliminary qualification round schedules for each subdivision at Championship. I hope I’m not being too subtle about this, but these schedules are preliminary, so they are subject to change. With 608 FRC Teams (Yowza!) planning to come to Championship, there is a chance some teams may not make it, despite their best intentions. If this happens, or if for any reason a team isn’t able to compete, we will be creating a new schedule for the subdivision to which they were assigned. We don’t want to leave a team that isn’t available to compete in the schedule for...

We got the message that teams really want to be able to practice on the practice fields in the pits on Wednesday. So, we’re making a change to what we announced earlier. See the updated practice field policy here. Teams that have passed inspection will be able to practice, only in tethered mode, from 5PM – 8PM...